Queen of Fire (Raven's Shadow 3)

She had started to run, intending to leap at one of them, pitch him from the saddle and ride clear, but soon found herself flat on her face with a mouthful of sand, a cord tightening about her leg. She thrashed, trying to tear free but another cord wrapped itself around her wrist. The rider who had spoken to the slavers dismounted to crouch at her side as she struggled, smiling in warm appreciation as he smoothed a hand across her face, speaking a single word in Volarian, “Garisai.”

They bound her from foot to shoulder, banishing all thought of escape, heaving her onto the back of a horse to be carried a few miles to this camp. They had been greeted by more slavers under the command of an overseer who displayed a strangely cowed demeanour in the presence of the red-armoured men, his head bowed as the leader gave curt instruction and Reva was placed at their mercy. She had steeled herself for further suffering, seeing the hatred in the faces of the slavers as they chained her, one holding a knife to her throat, two more standing with spears no more than an inch from her chest as the shackles were snapped into place. But whatever vengeful thoughts they harboured, it seemed their orders forbade any mistreatment beyond some rough handling as she was hauled into the caged wagon. But, as she surveyed her new surroundings, it became clear she was not to be spared all forms of torment.

She had to strain against her chains and crane her neck to see it, but with sufficient effort could view the spectacle of other captives being brought in and subjected to the slavers’ attentions. Their injunction against harming her clearly didn’t extend to the other prizes claimed from the shoreline. The first was an archer judging by the breadth of his frame, stumbling to his knees before the overseer who bent to view a deep wound in the man’s chest before standing back with a dismissive wave. Another slaver came forward, curved dagger in hand, and slit the archer’s throat before Reva formed sufficient thought to cry out in protest.

She refused to look away as more were brought in, though her body ached from the strain. They were mostly Cumbraelins, with a few Realm Guard, slaughtered or spared depending on their injuries. The storm had evidently wrought considerable damage for it seemed more were discarded than spared. She resisted the faint seed of hope nurtured by the fact that neither Antesh nor Arentes were among the prisoners. Lost to the sea or slaughtered on the shore, what difference does it make? I killed them all regardless.

The last captive provided the hardest trial, a slender figure with cropped hair, moving with a straight back despite her shackles, refusing to be cowed by the men who towered over her. “Lehra!” Reva called out, slashing her chains against the bars of the cage. A slaver thrust his spear-butt through the bars to push her back, then stepped away at a harsh glower from one of the red men. Reva strained to see Lehra again, finding the Scarred Daughter standing with a smile as she beheld the Blessed Lady, eyes shining with undimmed awe. “I knew the Father would spare you, my lady!” she called, voice bright and joyous.

The overseer grunted a curse, raising a hand to deliver a cuff to the girl’s face. Lehra didn’t shrink from it, instead angling her head and opening her mouth wide as the slaver’s hand connected with her face, biting down hard. A girlish shriek erupted from the overseer’s mouth as he tried to tear himself free, but Lehra held on, even as the other slavers assailed her with whips and cudgels, shaking her head like a terrier as she worried at the flesh, stopping only when a spear was thrust through her back, pinning her to the sand.

Reva heard a woman screaming somewhere, feeling a hard thumping in her forehead and a warm trickle of blood cascading down her face. A Volarian voice barked at her and she felt rough hands pulling her back from the bars, now bloody from where she had pounded her head against them. She heard the woman’s screams fade and choked over the sudden catch in her throat. She found herself staring up into the face of the red-armoured man from the beach, the one who seemed to command the others. His grin was gone now and he regarded her with an expression of faint puzzlement, head tilted like a cat regarding a shiny novelty.

His face dimmed and she knew that fatigue, pain and despair were conspiring to drag her into unconsciousness. She found enough hate to keep it at bay a moment longer. “I am the elverah,” she told the red man in a hoarse rasp. “I have killed more of you than I can count, and I am far from done.”

• • •

She awoke to find herself no longer alone in the cage. The face of the man slumped opposite her was concealed by a lank cascade of blond hair, swaying with the motion of the wagon. Reva could tell he was tall, and no stranger to work or war judging by the strength evident in the scarred and powerful hands resting on his knees, the shackles tight on his well-muscled wrists. Reva sighed, not for the first time wondering at the Father’s inexhaustible supply of trials for a sinful soul.

“Wake up, my lord,” she said, kicking out to nudge his bare foot. Like her, his boots had been taken.

The blond man stirred but failed to wake, voicing only a faint grunt. Reva kicked him again, harder. “My lord Shield!”

His head jerked up with a shout, blue eyes wide with alarm and, she noted to her dismay, not a little fear. His panic faded at the sight of her, though his survey of their surroundings provoked a barely concealed moan of despair. “I dreamed I died,” he muttered, head slumping. “It was a good dream.”

“They took you on the beach?” she asked.

His head jerked in affirmation. “A dozen or so of us. I managed to cling to some wreckage in the storm with a few others. We swam to shore at first light. We were heading north, making for the landing site, then they came.”

“The slavers?”

“No, the others.” The Shield’s hands tightened into fists, his chains giving off a faint rattle.

“The men in red armour?”

“We had no weapons. Nothing to fight with.” A strange guttural sound escaped him and she realised he was laughing. “So they gave us swords. Each of us, given a sword by our enemies. I fought so hard . . . But I couldn’t save them. When it was over they killed the wounded and took me, the only one left, too spent to even stand. They seemed to find me . . . entertaining.”

“Garisai,” Reva murmured.

The Shield’s head came up again, his gaze suddenly bright. “What?”

“One of them called me that when they took me. You know what it means?”

He leaned back, some vestige of his old humour showing in the sardonic twitch of his brows. “Yes, it means we would have been fortunate if they’d killed us.”

• • •

The succeeding days in the wagon took on a dreadful monotony. They were never allowed release from the cage; their food, consisting of two bowls of gruel a day and two cups of water, was shoved through a slat in the wagon’s iron-braced sides. No utensils were provided so they were obliged to eat with their fingers. They had been provided a bucket for bodily waste, emptied whenever they stopped by means of a collaborative effort to tip the contents out through the bars. They had learned to wait until the slaver driving their wagon had stepped down from the board as he took great delight in spurring the oxen on a step or two in order to douse them in their own filth.

“Redflower,” the Shield observed on the morning of the tenth day, gazing at the passing fields of crimson blooms. “Puts us perhaps forty miles from Volar.”

“You know this country?” Reva asked.

“Came here as a boy sailor many years ago. Merchant vessel, before I saw the wisdom, and profit, of a pirate’s life. The Volarians grow the best redflower, and it always brings in decent coin, if you can stomach their ways long enough to strike a deal.”

“Your hatred was birthed before the war, then?”

“Hatred? No, merely vague disgust in those days. My people are rich in faults, I know, but slavery has never been amongst them. Any Meldenean captain found to have carried slaves would soon find himself shunned and shipless.”

Reva looked up, feeling the wagon begin to slow, her gaze drawn to the driver staring at something ahead. It took a moment for the object of his interest to come into view, a tall pole set alongside the road, topped with a protruding beam in the manner of a gallows. Suspended from the beam was something so mangled it took a moment for Reva to recognise it as a corpse. The legs were blackened and charred to stumps, the stomach cavity open and empty, and the head . . . The face was probably male, rendered into an ageless cracked leather mask by decomposition, but the teeth bared in a wide, frozen scream, testifying to the agony with which this man had met his end.

The driver murmured something to himself, looking away from the sight and snapping the reins to urge the oxen to a faster pace.

“The three deaths,” the Shield translated. “An agonising poison first, then burning, then disembowelment. Traditional Volarian punishment for treason, though it hasn’t been used for many years.”

Reva glanced up as another pole came into view, the corpse that dangled from it similarly abused, though this one’s eyes had been put out. She asked Ell-Nestra if this held any significance but he shrugged. “Only that someone enjoys his work, I suspect.”

By the time night fell they had counted over a hundred poles, ten for every mile they covered.